Paulo Bittencourt’s Artistic Life
I was born in 1966 in Castro, Brazil, but I spent my childhood in Rio de Janeiro. My mother took me (and my three brothers) to the Adventist Church. At the age of 22, I stopped being a sheep and became a freethinker.
I’ve always enjoyed drawing, photographing and singing. Singing ended up becoming the main way I express myself artistically.
These are just a few of the many artistic stations of my life.
I was the bass of a gospel quartet at the Paraná Adventist Institute, a boarding school in the Maringá region. Our quartet even performed at a festival in Curitiba, Paraná’s capital. I sang also in this school’s choir and was often invited to sing solos (1982).
The same quartet, with some of the girls from the choir (1983).
In 1987, I went to study Theology at the Adventist Institute of Education, a boarding college in São Paulo, to become a church pastor. With my head full of questions, two and a half years later I abandoned my studies and, with the 600 dollars I had earned selling bibles door to door, went on an adventure to Europe, where I ended up staying. At the AIE, I sang in the choir, but I also did a lot of solos. I had been considered to become the baritone of the Brazilian The King’s Heralds Quartet, a kind of The Beatles of the Adventist Church.
I moved to Europe in 1989. After a short stay in Portugal, France, England and Germany, I ended up in Austria, where I stayed and, at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien, studied Opera Singing. In the photo, I’m at a rehearsal of the Arnold Schoenberg Choir for a concert at the Musikverein, in Vienna (1994). With this choir, I performed also at the famous Carnegie Hall, in New York.
A concert of music by Heitor Villa-Lobos, at the Boesendorfer Saal, in Vienna, whose objective was to raise public awareness of the problems faced by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, especially the Yanomami (1996). I sang Three Indigenous Poems.
In 1995, I was hired by the largest German-language theater, the Vienna Burgtheater. One of the plays I took part in was performed also in Berlin. In the photo, I am wearing a costume from the play Orpheus in the Underworld (1996).
In another costume from the same play.
In the dressing room of the Akademie Theater, in Vienna (1997).
With coworkers, in another play.
With coworkers, in another play of the Akademie Theater (1988). The bespectacled gentleman was an icon of Austrian theater.
Playing Guglielmo, from the opera Così Fan Tutte, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the Stadttheater, in Baden, Austria (1999).
Playing agogô (an Afro-Brazilian instrument) in a parade of traditional music from different cultures, in Vienna (1996).
Playing and singing bossa nova in Volksgarten park, in the center of Vienna (1999). One day, I passed by there and saw and heard an Austrian playing bossa nova, which I, despite being Brazilian, barely knew. I was so enchanted that I bought a guitar and, learning by doing, began playing (and singing) in this park myself, which is in front of the Parliament. It became a meeting point, sometimes even with beer or wine.
Playing and singing bossa nova, at an event behind the city hall, in the center of Vienna, organized by an immigrant human rights NGO, SOS Mitmensch (2015).
On two full pages of the newspaper Der Standard, in an awareness campaign about the different cultures present in Austria (1996). The name of this place is Heldenplatz, in the center of Vienna. “Sprache verbindet” means “Language unites”.